I’ve gotten to know Tim Bauer through the group fitness program we’re both in. What an inspiring guy: sample 1 and sample 2. Check out his blog.

Mike Vacanti is one of my coaches. This blog post on feeling insecure about your own fitness compared to others was very thought-provoking for me. It applies much more broadly than just fitness, too.

Speaking of fitness: you’d be amazed at all the stuff you can make with protein powder. There are so many flavors and varieties! I like the Optimum Nutrition stuff that Costco sells because Costco, but I’m always interested in trying new kinds. BioTrust is pretty good, but it’s expensive and they spam their customers. GNC’s stuff is edible but not great (at least the vanilla and cookies & cream flavors; haven’t tried any others).

Amazon’s new “Mayday” customer-support feature has the potential to be a huge game changer. It will be very interesting to see whether they can scale it and provide good quality service. (If you haven’t seen it, it’s like OnStar, but for your tablet.)

I’m always interested in a good invasive-species story, like the one about the testicle-eating fish spotted in New Jersey. However, of more local interest, the plague of little white bugs we’ve been having here in Huntsville is actually the result of the Asian hackberry woolly aphid, an invasive species that was first spotted in Georgia in 1996 (no one’s sure exactly how it got there, it turns out) and has made its way north– and west, having been spotted in Texas. (It’s also in California but it’s not clear if it was imported from Asia to California or somehow made it from Texas westward).

I’ve mentioned the use of precision robotics for filming high-speed stuff before, but this video takes the cake. Projection mapping has huge potential for theatrical applications… and just think of what Disney could do with it if they wanted.

Like Bo, I have not had good experience refilling printer cartridges. The first time I tried it, everything went well, but it wasn’t my printer. The second time, it was, and I never could get the printer to recognize that the refilled cartridge was usable. When a refill kit costs $6 and an off-brand cartridge costs $13, you know what? I’ll pay $7 to not have to deal with toner backsplash and fiddling with the stupid flag gear.

One response to “Thursday trivia #99”

We talked about those little bugs at work today. I had not connected them with the little syrupy drops that show up all over the car windows, and I had also not thought them insects. I assumed it was something botanical.